The National Health Action Party has endorsed a local doctor, public health expert and former navy medical officer Dr Iain Maclennan as their candidate to contest the Eastleigh by-election.
Dr Maclennan, aged 54, lives in Bursledon, in the borough of Eastleigh.

He has just retired from the NHS after serving as GP for some years and more recently as a consultant in public health with the local Hampshire Primary Care Trust. He also served 10 years in the Royal Navy.

The campaign takes place in the shadow of the horrific revelations from Mid Staffordshire Hospitals, which shows beyond any doubt the consequences of an NHS in which management attention is increasingly focused on financial balance sheets rather than patient care – a situation that will worsen when the coalition government’s Health & Social Care Act takes effect from April.

Iain Maclennan will be standing up for everyone who wants our NHS restored and improved, not broken up into fragments and flogged off for private profit – and for all those who are fed up with the sleaze of the mainstream parties.

Iain has made clear his determination to break from these machine politics and be genuinely independent. He said:
“If I am elected, I will be a champion for the constant improvement of the NHS.
“I will work to publicise all the perks and allowances that MPs get and promote better value alternatives.

“And I give a commitment to debate major issues in the local media, public meetings and social media before voting rather than blindly following a mainstream party whip.”
Since becoming active in politics in 2005 Iain has stood as a Green Party candidate in council elections and had been selected as the party’s parliamentary candidate for Eastleigh – until it decided not to contest the by-election.

Personally committed to defending the NHS, Iain accepted the National Health Action party’s invitation to stand as their candidate to challenge in an election in which the two front-running parties are jointly complicit in the controversial Health & Social Care Act, and the cutbacks and privatisation taking place in the English NHS.

Joint Party leader Dr Richard Taylor has warmly endorsed the new candidate. He said:
“I am delighted Iain has agreed to stand as the NHA candidate for the Eastleigh by-election. His wide experience of the NHS and health care issues will make him an ideal MP to fight for the preservation of the original ideals of the NHS and for the rights of the disadvantaged.

“The voters of Eastleigh now have a genuine choice – between the sleazy politics of the mainstream parties once again jockeying for position, parties which between them have set the NHS on a course for fragmentation, divisive competition, privatisation and continuing cutbacks: or a new party which rejects this approach and offers a commitment to restore, defend and improve the NHS and public services.”